tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:/feedFutureHunt2016-08-24T18:56:16-07:00Michael Gasiorekhttp://mgasiorek.comSvbtle.comtag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/35-billion-merger-uber-and-didi-ridesharing2016-08-24T18:56:16-07:002016-08-24T18:56:16-07:00After $35 Billion Merger, Uber and Didi Are Set to Take Over the Ridesharing Universe<p><em>The $35 billion merger between Uber China and Didi will make the two companies masters of the rideshare universe–and maybe even profitable.</em></p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Originally written for <a href="http://www.inc.com/michael-gasiorek/5-reasons-uber-gave-up-to-didi-and-won-in-china.html">Inc.com</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/fowg7lifabsjw_small.jpg" alt="Uber Didi.jpg"></p>
<p>Scan the top Uber headlines this week and you might be convinced the <a href="http://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/uber-china-merges-with-didi-chuxing.html">$35 billion Uber China-Didi Chuxing merger</a> was a surrender. But don’t be fooled: Uber hasn’t given up - it has made out not just with riches but with dignity. After just two years, the independently operated Uber China has joined Didi to control 95% of the Chinese rideshare market.</p>
<p>Written off as a loss by Time and Fortune, five key reasons make the merger a major coup for Uber’s global ambitions. That’s not counting the latest $1 billion injection into Uber by Didi at its $68 billion valuation - now worth more than Ford and GM.</p>
<h1 id="uber-china-finally-stops-burning-cash_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#uber-china-finally-stops-burning-cash_1"> </a>Uber China Finally Stops Burning Cash</h1>
<p>In the price-conscious Chinese market, both Uber and Didi were spending ludicrous amounts on marketing, rider subsidies and driver bonuses. Uber reportedly spent $1 billion each year to win just <a href="https://www.techinasia.com/uber-market-share-35-percent-china">20% market share</a>, and had yet to achieve profitability in a single Chinese city. Though Didi claimed breaking even in 100 cities back in January, <a href="https://newsroom.uber.com/uber-china-didi/">Kalanick writes</a> “both companies have yet to turn a profit [in China],” adding “getting to profitability is the only way to build a sustainable business that can best serve Chinese riders, drivers and cities over the long term.”</p>
<p>Uber investors have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/business/dealbook/china-uber-didi-chuxing.html">reportedly been pushing</a> for a solution to the fruitless spending in China, and with the merger, they’ve made off like bandits. Uber China investors will receive a $7 billion stake in Uber-Didi, or 20% of the $35 billion merged company.</p>
<p>With the great China rideshare war now monopolized by a single player, this entity is free to increase prices while reducing the billions of dollars spent competing. The result? A rapid valuation increase for Uber-Didi - which, remember, achieved its $35 billion valuation before profitability. Just imagine what it’ll be worth when it makes money.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Didi will back Uber’s global operations with a $1 billion investment, possibly padding Uber’s coffers in preparation for an upcoming IPO.</p>
<h1 id="uber-escapes-the-china-distribution-problem_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#uber-escapes-the-china-distribution-problem_1"> </a>Uber Escapes the China Distribution Problem</h1>
<p>The <a href="https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-internet-in-china/">Chinese internet industry</a> is like nowhere else in the world: for example, Facebook and Twitter face both daunting local competitors like WeChat and TaoBao, but must also navigate Chinese censorship laws and market-making practices that favor local companies. While Uber historically enjoyed a good relationship with Western companies like Google (Google Ventures is an Uber investor), it entered China’s internet industry with few friends in high places.</p>
<p>Worse yet, these local platforms - <a href="http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/">WeChat especially</a> - are the primary means of distribution for technology services like payments, ridesharing, travel booking, and messaging. Though Uber tried to play the partnership game in China through an <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/12/baiduber/">integration with Baidu</a>, the leading search engine in China’s Google-free zone, it could never hope to reach WeChat’s nearly 750 million monthly active users. Why? WeChat is a spin-off from Tencent, the Chinese internet conglomerate that is part owner of Didi alongside Alibaba. In China, this type of near-monopolistic collusion is common - and against foreign companies, sometimes encouraged.</p>
<h1 id="uber-frees-itself-of-investing-in-new-regulat_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#uber-frees-itself-of-investing-in-new-regulat_1"> </a>Uber Frees Itself of Investing in New Regulations</h1>
<p>Offering a service generally loved by riders and loathed by taxi companies, Uber has only received explicit approval to run ridesharing operations in a minority of cities. In areas like Austin where ridesharing services have been aggressively regulated, Uber and Lyft both withdrew rather than face increased costs and a legal precedent. As China announced <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/business/international/china-uber-didi-chuxing.html">legalization and regulation of ridesharing</a>, Uber’s withdrawal draws parallels to Austin’s strategic retreat.</p>
<p>The final regulations to take effect on November 1st demand Chinese Uber and Didi drivers have 3 years of experience, be licensed by a local taxi regulator, and have no criminal record. Cars used must have no more than 370,000 miles (600,000 km) driven to be eligible.</p>
<p>Consider the huge cost Uber would be spending on enforcing these regulations, combined with Uber’s weak Chinese political ties when compared to Didi, and throw in China’s propensity for <a href="http://qz.com/423288/fake-drivers-and-passengers-are-boosting-ubers-growth-in-china/">driver fraud</a>. It’s no wonder Uber chose to go after lower hanging fruit.</p>
<h1 id="uber-plays-defense-against-the-didilyftgrabol_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#uber-plays-defense-against-the-didilyftgrabol_1"> </a>Uber Plays Defense against the Didi-Lyft-Grab-Ola Cartel</h1>
<p>Remember Lyft’s 2015 “[Uber killing](<a href="https://blog.lyft.com/posts/an-update-on-our-international-partnerships">https://blog.lyft.com/posts/an-update-on-our-international-partnerships</a>” partnership with Didi? It was one of four ride-sharing companies–Didi, Lyft, India’s Ola, and Southeast Asia’s Grab Taxi– to join Didi’s global network, designed to let users of any app to tap into the driver network of the entire partnership, effectively expanding Lyft’s network to China. Though sealed with Didi’s $100 million dealinvestment in Lyft, the <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/1/12343850/lyft-didi-partnership-uber-china">deal might be coming apart</a> - in Uber’s favor.</p>
<p>Here’s why: as Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick earns a seat on Didi’s board of directors, Didi’s own CEO Cheng Wei will have a seat at Uber’s table, signaling an intent for a long-term, deeply involved partnership. Moreso than the “DLGO cartel,” this formal relationship means each CEO has a vested interest in - and some influence over - the success of his new partner.</p>
<p>And then it gets weird. By investing in Uber, Didi - which took $1 billion from Apple in May - has inadvertently made Apple an Uber backer. Simultaneously, as Uber backs Didi, Uber owns 18% of the company controlling that same $100 million Lyft investment from 2015, placing itself as a favored Didi partner.</p>
<h1 id="uber-can-focus-on-the-future-profitability-am_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#uber-can-focus-on-the-future-profitability-am_1"> </a>Uber Can Focus on the Future: Profitability &amp; The Automated Fleet</h1>
<p>Though Uber has reached profitability in a handful of its major cities like San Francisco, the $2 billion spent on Chinese rider subsidies was burning a hole in Uber’s finances. Now, that same capital can be aimed at improving profitability in growing regions in India, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa and Europe.</p>
<p>But the most valuable work Uber will do with this money isn’t optimizing unit economics of each ride - it’s totally redefining how those economics look. Uber knows the greatest cost of operating its rideshare business is its drivers - and in a pitched battle with <a href="https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/apple-taps-blackberry-talent-as-car-project-takes-software-turn">Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11712268/gm-cruise-automation-self-driving-electric-chevy-bolt-lyft">GM</a>, and Tesla, has been preparing for the seemingly <a href="https://medium.com/startup-grind/why-cant-consumers-stop-driverless-cars-3f1f27717638">inevitable self-driving future</a>.</p>
<p>Kalanick hasn’t been shy about preparing to automate his business, investing heavily in both the <a href="https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/">automotive hardware</a> and <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/31/uber-invests-500m-in-mapping/">mapping software</a>. It’s a move aimed at distancing Uber from mapping provider and eventual competitor Google, though the success of this venture is <a href="https://medium.com/startup-grind/uber-is-fucked-long-term-3ed36a901d08">rumored to be moving slowly</a>.</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Update: looks like Uber just chose to speed things up with the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8">acquisition of Otto Motors</a> for around $680 million, and its <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/05/19/uber-begins-testing-self-driving-cars-pittsburgh/84587848/">first self-driving car on the road in Pittsburg</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/yh5hkwdyeyg7dw_small.png" alt="Self Drive.png"></p>
<p>Speaking with <a href="https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/stop-building-for-mobile-build-to-drive-talk-and-work-says-spark-capitals-megan-quinn/">Megan Quinn of Spark Capital</a>, which sold Cruise to GM for approximately $1 billion, the hunger for self-driving technology from automakers and private equity firms is overwhelming. Uber will need that new budget to take advantage of the next platform: entire self-driving fleets to be used for transport of people and goods, inter-coordinated across entire cities and countries. This is a race, and one Uber cannot stand to lose.</p>
<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1ww7Rmqi_qg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/travelhack2014-06-24T11:58:35-07:002014-06-24T11:58:35-07:00How to Fly for Free every 3 Months<h1 id="a-total-beginner39s-guide-to-travel-hacking_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#a-total-beginner39s-guide-to-travel-hacking_1"> </a>A Total Beginner’s Guide to Travel Hacking</h1>
<p>Last week I booked a little getaway: Shanghai to Hong Kong to Indonesia with a long stopover in Malaysia - and back. In Hong Kong, I’ll be handling visa matters and seeing old friends; I’ll have enough time in Malaysia to see the Petronas Towers &amp; <a href="http://www.mindvalley.com/">Mindvalley</a>; and Bali, Indonesia promises both incredible environment and people, if the nomad hackers at <a href="http://www.elevenyellow.com/blog/2014/01/28/living-hacker-villa-come-visit-us/">Eleven Yellow</a> are any indication. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/ivmfzgnpmqyy1g.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/ivmfzgnpmqyy1g_small.jpg" alt="Petronas.jpg"></a></p>
<p>Here’s the kicker: <strong>I booked all my flights one week in advance and paid USD 60 for everything.</strong> I won’t be alone: a good friend coordinated his Bali trip from San Francisco for pennies on the dollar with this exact strategy. Sound like a dream vacation? I’m going to show you every step I took to make this happen, and in 3 months you can <a href="mailto:capax.infinity@gmail.com">tell me how your trip was even better.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/o27szamhja.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/o27szamhja_small.png" alt="HKG - KUL - DBL Tix.png"></a></p>
<p><strong>This process works by accruing as many rewards points as possible, as quickly and cheaply as possible.</strong> Your results may vary, but I can usually pull off a free international one-way or round-trip on the same continent with this every 3 months. This post is purely informative, and I make no guarantees of any sort to anyone applying these steps. The biggest caveat of all: as of 2014, this process requires a United States bank account &amp; US Amazon Payments account. I’d love to hear about global alternatives you find!</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Since this post went up, I’ve been invited to share these tactics with the <a href="http://www.under30changemakers.com/">Under 30 Changemakers</a> and the <a href="http://www.onesalon.org/">Stanford Salon</a> communities. Scroll to the end of this post for a video introduction!</p>
</blockquote><h1 id="first-the-card_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#first-the-card_1"> </a>First, The Card</h1>
<p>Maximizing your 3 month travel turnover requires a strong foundation: a really great travel rewards credit card. Your typical card will make this offer: spend USD X,000 in the first 3 months and get 25,000-50,000 reward points, which can amount to as much as USD 600 in travel spend.<br>
For this trip, I used the <a href="https://applynow.chase.com/FlexAppWeb/renderApp.do?PID=CFFD2&amp;SPID=FHRJ&amp;CELL=600G&amp;MSC=1512281973">Chase Sapphire Preferred</a> card. <a href="http://thepointsguy.com/top-deals-3/">ThePointsGuy</a> has some stellar &amp; up-to-date recommendations. I don’t get any kickbacks for recommending this card - I legitimately think it’s good.</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p><strong>UPDATE</strong> On November 2014, Chase upped the minimum spend on the Chase Sapphire Preferred to $4,000 in the span of 3 months. The card is still great, but this makes using it less perfect for this strategy. I suggest looking into the <a href="http://www.barclaycardarrival.com/arrival-plus/?campaignId=1729&amp;od=bcarrival&amp;cellNumber=24">Barclay Arrival+ Mastercard</a> for a great offer on a $3,000 spend.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/warrqvhxrydrq.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/warrqvhxrydrq_small.png" alt="Chase Sapphire Preferred Travel Card.png"></a></p>
<h2 id="here39s-what-you39re-looking-for_2">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#here39s-what-you39re-looking-for_2"> </a>Here’s what you’re looking for:</h2>
<ul>
<li> <strong>The points</strong>: aim for at least 30,000 bonus points, more is better.</li>
<li> <strong>Reasonable minimum spend</strong>: aim for USD 3,000 in first 3 months. </li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>If the requirement is not more than USD 1,000/month, you will not need to use the card at all except in the Payment step. That’s 3 uses in 3 months. If more than USD 1,000, you’ll need to spend on your own or use additional services like <a href="http://venmo.com/i/Michael-Gasiorek">Venmo</a> or <a href="https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/send-money-online">PayPal</a> to meet the limit.</p>
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li> <strong>Waived annual free for the first year</strong>: this allows you to incur no cost over the lifetime of the card if you close the account before the end of the first year.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="if-you39re-going-to-use-the-card-normally-som_3">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#if-you39re-going-to-use-the-card-normally-som_3"> </a>If you’re going to use the card normally, some tips:</h3>
<ul>
<li> A great extra is <strong>no international transaction fees</strong>, which is perfect for travelers already on the move.</li>
<li> A strong <strong>points transfer program</strong> is key if you have a preferred airline or hotel provider.</li>
<li> Look for a good <strong>point bonus program</strong> for purchases you make often, like groceries or dining out. Some cards offer 5x points per dollar spent on certain categories like gas stations.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/vqbcopjl47m8w.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/vqbcopjl47m8w_small.png" alt="Automate.png"></a></p>
<p>Once you have the card, connect your bank account with the card for automatic payments to avoid any screw-ups. This makes the entire process almost automated. While you’re at it, go for paperless statements &amp; save the planet!</p>
<h1 id="next-the-payments_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#next-the-payments_1"> </a>Next, The Payments</h1>
<p>To get those juicy points, you’re going to need to spend a certain amount of money each month on the card for the first three months. This differs by card, but if your minimum monthly spending requirement to get at those points is under USD 1,000 you will only ever need to use this card 3 times - and it won’t cost you anything. How? <strong>You’re going to need a trusted friend, because you’ll be sending each other a bunch of money.</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>UPDATE</strong>: Naturally, this was too good to be true, right? Some three years after the idea was first broken, <strong>Amazon has finally shut down this service on October 2014</strong>. Some great alternatives come from <a href="http://millionmilesecrets.com/2011/07/20/40-powerful-ways-to-complete-your-credit-card-minimum-spending-requirements/">MillionMileSecrets</a>. For simplicity’s sake, I suggest spending everything you can on your card and supplementing any remainder with Venmo transfers.</p>
<p><em>Charge Cards</em>: Alternatives still exist in the form of the <a href="https://www.bluebird.com/">BlueBird</a> and <a href="https://www.serve.com/">Serve</a> cards, which can be used to leverage credit in payment of bills, rent, and even college loans. You can use your travel card to charge these cash cards with as much as $1,500/month to be used for any transactions that would ordinarily require a check.</p>
<p><em>Virtual Transfers, with Fee</em>: For fully hands-off minimum spend generation, <a href="http://venmo.com/i/Michael-Gasiorek">Venmo</a> charges a 3% fee while <a href="http://paypal.com">PayPal</a> charges 2.9% + $0.30/transaction. These are not great solutions for creating spend compared to simply making purchases.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/isizdeghiqabq.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/isizdeghiqabq_small.png" alt="Payments Start.png"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://payments.amazon.com/home">Amazon Payments</a> is awesome: it lets you charge a credit card or bank account for up to USD 1,000 every 30 days for free. I haven’t found any other service that offers no service charge on credit card transactions. You can set up auto-deposits to your bank account, too.</p>
<ol>
<li> <strong>Set up your Amazon Payments profile</strong>: create a login, connect your bank account, and your credit card. You’ll need all three to send and receive money, and it can be a pain: you may be asked for confirmation on both the card and bank, and required to send a picture of your ID. This is a one-time thing, and worth doing. If you can’t be bothered, <a href="http://venmo.com/i/Michael-Gasiorek">Venmo</a> is easier to set up.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Make sure your friend has a profile set up, too. He or she will need it to send the full amount back to you. You’ll need to know each others’ Amazon account emails for the next part.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jkslxi2onmnwjw.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jkslxi2onmnwjw_small.png" alt="Amazon Payments.png"></a></p>
<ol>
<li>
<strong>Send USD 1,000 to your friend:</strong> <em>Make sure to select “Payment for Service/Goods,”</em> or you will incur a service charge on the transaction. Also make sure they’ll return the cash to you in a timely fashion to the same bank account with which you pay off your credit card. You can use “Request Money” for this.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote class="large">
<p><strong>Do this every billing cycle.</strong> The easiest way is to set a reminder for 30 days from the first time you do it, but keep in mind the transaction can take 3-5 days to show up on your billing statement, so don’t wait until the last minute.</p>
</blockquote><h3 id="if-you-need-to-spend-usd-1000_3">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#if-you-need-to-spend-usd-1000_3"> </a>If you need to spend +USD 1,000</h3><blockquote class="large">
<p><a href="http://venmo.com/i/Michael-Gasiorek">Venmo</a> is a solid choices to put additional spending on your card in the same way, but they charge a transaction fee of 3-5%. That’s as high as USD 25 on a USD 500 transaction, best avoided. <em>Remember: if you’ve grabbed a card with over USD 1,000/mo spend and you’re desperate, you can always buy <a href="http://usa.visa.com/personal/personal-cards/gift-cards/index.jsp">prepaid cash cards</a> or gift cards online!</em></p>
</blockquote><h1 id="last-the-trip_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#last-the-trip_1"> </a>Last, The Trip</h1>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/cf95lob4vbqriw.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/cf95lob4vbqriw_small.jpg" alt="skyline_2847979a.jpg"></a></p>
<p>At the end of three months, you’ll have accrued some points from your spending, and then receive a fat bonus from hitting the minimum monthly spend. If you don’t already have a global bucket list, try Krakow, Hong Kong, and Costa Rica to start - <a href="http://www.visahq.com/visas.php">no visas required for US citizens</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/rimwbpxq9bgr5a.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/rimwbpxq9bgr5a_small.png" alt="Search.png"></a></p>
<p>Since you’ll most likely be purchasing your ticket through the card’s reward service, the absolute best deals you find on Kayak or <a href="http://matrix.itasoftware.com/">ITA Travel Matrix</a> won’t show up. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7knbmrsc5mny7w.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7knbmrsc5mny7w_small.png" alt="Find.png"></a></p>
<p>Still, it pays to know your best travel times &amp; locations. I think nowhere is better for this than SkyScanner: you can search the entire globe for a year’s worth of travel deals and hone in on the best day to make your getaway. With their search by price of map, you don’t even need to know where you want to go.</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<h3 id="cherry-on-top-frequent-flyer-points_3">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#cherry-on-top-frequent-flyer-points_3"> </a>Cherry on Top: Frequent Flyer Points</h3>
<p>Double-check if your chosen airline provider offers a membership at <a href="http://millionmilesecrets.com/mile-and-point-resources/airline-frequent-flyer-program-sign-up/">MillionMileSecrets</a>, set up an account, and throw your account number in the “Frequent Flyer Number” field at checkout.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/nrouew1mlhkpga_small.png" alt="Travel.png"></p>
<p>Once you’ve decided on where to go and when, you’re ready to pull the trigger on your trip. Search for the same deal you found on SkyScanner and book through your credit rewards platform. If you’d like to avoid the annual charge on the card, set a reminder to cancel after you return from your trip. Remember to pack light.</p>
<p><strong>Can’t decide?</strong> My favorite way to open myself up to inspiration is with <a href="https://ifttt.com/p/mgasiorek/shared">IFTTT alerts</a> for crazy travel deals from my favorite travel hacker websites: <a href="https://ifttt.com/recipes/420086-flight-deals-to-phone-from-secretflying-travelhack">Secret Flying</a>, <a href="https://ifttt.com/recipes/420085-flight-deal-to-phone-from-thepointsguy-travelhack">The Points Guy</a>, and <a href="https://ifttt.com/recipes/420084-flight-deals-to-phone-from-theflightdeal-travelhack">The Flight Deal</a>. <br>
<a href="https://ifttt.com/p/mgasiorek/shared"><br>
<img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/bomvkiwo8tedra.png" alt="IFTTT Travel Hack.png"></a></p>
<p>With these “recipes,” whenever any of these sites publishes a crazy deal you’ll receive a notification on your phone - or if you prefer, by email, Twitter, Slack, on Pebble, you name it. <a href="https://ifttt.com/p/mgasiorek/shared">See the full list here</a>.</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Another smart idea is to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/hobica/2013/05/21/deal-newsletters-fare-alerts-us-based-airlines/2336267/">sign up for travel alerts from top airlines</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Read Next</strong>: <a href="http://mgasiorek.com/whats-in-your-backpack">What’s in Your Backpack?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/xixsdil5jdo5mw.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/xixsdil5jdo5mw_small.jpg" alt="Bali.jpg"></a></p>
<p>The phrase “travel hacker” usually summons one of two reactions: hopeful confusion or scornful disbelief. “Wow, I wish I could live like that,” or “This can’t possibly be legal” is about on point. For most people, trips like this can take a month of planning, at least a few hundred bucks, and a nervous freak-out. Worse yet at those who swear they’d love to travel, and maybe even have a full trip planned they talk about passionately - if only they just had the money and time! It’s legal and it can be easy - and this is just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<h2 id="strongthis-trick-takes-about-an-4-hours-of-ti_2">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#strongthis-trick-takes-about-an-4-hours-of-ti_2"> </a><strong>This trick takes about an 4 hours of time over the course of 3 months - not counting deciding where to go - and won’t cost you a thing if you follow all the directions.</strong>
</h2><h2 id="tried-this-out-a-hrefmailtocapaxinfinitygmail_2">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#tried-this-out-a-hrefmailtocapaxinfinitygmail_2"> </a>Tried this out? <a href="mailto:capax.infinity@gmail.com">Let me know.</a>
</h2><blockquote class="large">
<p>For an accelerated introduction or beginner’s summary, check out our talk to the Under 30 Changemakers community.</p>
</blockquote>
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<h2 id="one-last-thing-check-out-a-hrefhttpbitlynomad_2">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#one-last-thing-check-out-a-hrefhttpbitlynomad_2"> </a>One last thing: check out <a href="http://bit.ly/nomadguide">The Digital Nomad Guide</a>!</h2>
<p>In 2014 or so, I wrote a “soft landing” guide for work-play travelers who were making their way into some of the classic Southeast Asian digital nomad hubs. Written for Derek Sivers’ <a href="https://woodegg.com/">WoodEgg</a> brand, the book can be purchased for $27 alongside his excellent Business in Asia guides. Here’s an excerpt:</p>
<p><a href="https://woodegg.com/go/nomad"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/uzu33dzsls5y6q_small.png" alt="Screen Shot 2016-05-17 at 5.55.33 PM.png"></a></p>
<p><em>The day you wake up to the sound of waves lapping at the sand steps away from your bungalow, a fresh breakfast of eggs and fruit waiting for you next to your laptop, with everything else you own stuffed in a small backpack that has been with you across the world – it might feel like you’ve made it. In this life, you might have less than 100 items to your name, trading in beautiful clothes, homes, and cars for access to incredible experiences on every continent. Your livelihood will depend on your access to good WiFi. You might think of it like a fundamental human right. Your now twice-extended passport might have more stamps than a post office, or you may have fallen in love with the first place you drop into.</em></p>
<p><em>The lifestyle of a digital nomad can seem like the stuff of fantasy. Our office is any flat surface. Our home is wherever we set our backpack. Our deepest friendships are sometimes with people we’ve never met in real life. “Where are you from?” becomes gradually more difficult to answer. But in many cities – from Las Vegas and Berlin, to Bangkok and Bali, and Buenos Aires to Medellin – you’ll find us in your cafes, your beaches, your hotel lounges, your coworking spaces doing the hard work to make this lifestyle a continued reality. Becoming a nomad is not leisure. As you just start out, it may feel like you’ve entered poverty compared to your past life. Your initial work weeks will be 60 or 80 hours, not 4 – and this will last for months or years.</em></p>
<p><em>A digital nomad is anyone who uses the advances in communication technology to create value regardless of location, freeing him or herself to work remotely. We use the Internet to scale and automate a business or provide services remotely, creating financial and time freedom to do the things a traditional work-life balance makes impossible to fit in.</em></p>
<p><em>But when you’ve built something that exists beyond you, that provides value to others for which they’re happy and willing to pay, and you’ve cut down on your anchors and expenses to create geographic independence and freedom of time – that is when you have made it, not into a life of idle relaxation, but one of choices.</em></p>
<p><em>That said, this is not the book on how to build your first online business. You’ll find hundreds of those. It’s the book about where to do it, how to make the most of it, and how to make a home for yourself on the road. Compiled from over 400 interviews with entrepreneurs, writers, consultants, and technologists living nomadically or far from home during a 2 year research quest by Derek Sivers’ Wood Egg project, the Go to Launch Nomad Guide is compiled from personal stories and expertise of those who have been in your shoes and have started moving forward on an adventure-rich lifestyle of their own design.</em></p>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/reflect2014-05-16T02:44:32-07:002014-05-16T02:44:32-07:00Reflections of a Global Graduate<blockquote class="large">
<p>When I returned from a year in Asia, I was asked by a professor and mentor to compose a reflection piece of my time abroad. This is that piece, unedited and in its original form.</p>
</blockquote><h1 id="how-it-all-began_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#how-it-all-began_1"> </a>How it all Began</h1>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/wwqdlezo6gqnw.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/wwqdlezo6gqnw_small.jpg" alt="img041.jpg"></a><br>
I’m a Polish immigrant raised in New Jersey, nurtured in New York, educated in Boston - yet my greatest aha moments came from a year in Asia. Reading a few intellectually dangerous books probably didn’t make me much fonder of expected ways of doing things. I’ve made troublemakers like Richard Branson and Tim Ferris my inspiration. I’m energized by the stories and philosophies of Paul Graham and TS Eliot and FDR. In college, my world was opened to the standards of American young adult development: the classes, social interactions, grades, and faux independence thrust on all college kids should teach us to learn, find jobs, work productively, find a partner, manage our finances to purchase a car, then home, then vacation packages and earn our long-awaited retirement. A middle-class retirement in the case of my generation, mind you, accounting for economic downturns, poor job prospects, and heavy student loans. Seemed like the next page of the story for a competent, competitive high schooler like me, although I wasn’t thinking it through then as deeply as I have since. I went for it in 2009, accepting a compelling offer from Northeastern University in International Business. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/cw8ehi1va91t0g.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/cw8ehi1va91t0g_small.jpg" alt="img132.jpg"></a><br>
I’ve always felt predisposed to be lucky. If I bet that luck was something legitimate and intrinsic to myself and others rather than an abstraction of coincidences, I’d wager the bet would be in my favor. That’s how lucky I mean. Northeastern, then, was a lucky match. Our co-op program meant I’d get the much-sought internship opportunities, and then some: for 6 months, I worked as an Tech Account Manager at AOL, then again at Jiahua in Shenzhen, China to develop a new <a href="http://www.studyrealchinese.com/">international education program</a>. Work opened my eyes to my ability to be effective in the professional world regardless of age. The international business program - ranking in the top 10 nationally now that our class of 2014 has run through it - also went in my favor. We’d be abroad for 15 months, which thrilled someone who just couldn’t pull the trigger on a self-designed gap year before college. My final win came through the region I chose - at first for an unrequited love of Japan, and only second for the promise of the new Land of Opportunity in China. I conclude with East Asian Studies &amp; Chinese - and with global purpose. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/middle-class-infographic">Give it until 2030</a> but I think the Asia track has been validated. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/40c5herfuw9zug.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/40c5herfuw9zug_small.png" alt="China.png"></a><br>
Of course, a lot didn’t mesh, too. Maybe it’s romantic but more likely it’s deluded: those lifechanging through-the-night discussions some of us (fine, I) came to college expecting didn’t happen as often as the movies show. More than the parties, which as an experience became stale quickly compared to travel, this is what I looked for from social circles at Northeastern, and I didn’t find it immediately. Honestly, I just didn’t look hard enough for it, falling into the early tragedy of friends by proximity rather than proficiency. Dorms are a great place to make friends, but it’s a grab bag. Some have remained great connections, but the best have been through the specific inner circles of ambitious people we’ve selectively cultivated. College is a great time to learn to pick your closest influencers - they’ll be shaping you, after all. It was more than people, it was also structure. The frustration of being forced to retread remedial concepts pissed me off enough to begin teaching myself things instead of studying for mundane finals. Useless assignments became opportunities to redesign: it is a shared greatness among professors to build assignments around passionate student suggestions rather than syllabus busywork. I tackled topics to serve multiple interests. Organizational Behavior reflections became blog posts I had been meaning to write. Localization projects became opportunities to fill gaps of regional understanding - of the Middle East, no less. We analyzed motivators of consumption at social ventures in Consumer Behavior, built a project for partners at TJX, but my best hack was organizing a 5-man team to produce $10k worth of research for my then startup team. If I wasn’t getting two problems with one stone, I was wasting ammunition. Hacking this system, I think, taught me more than playing within it. Finally, I also expected professors who would, as Socrates, pull from within me a better self through their shared wisdom. While many have been certainly wise, one of my most impactful professors yet remains in Hong Kong. I came to this conclusion: as professors research and publish, the student body parties, and administrators market and build facilities for our alumni benefactors - <strong>you are the only one holding yourself accountable for learning anything.</strong> Even thought they were rooted in dissatisfaction with the system, these discoveries wouldn’t have been possible without college. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7xc3jdoidtza.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/7xc3jdoidtza_small.png" alt="Real Life.png"></a><br>
Ever since my trip and generally in speeding towards graduation, I’ve struggled with a question too few students consider during their time, and even fewer before they start writing applications: <strong>“Why did I go to college?”</strong> The consideration started during high school, with that focus on the “next step” in life, as if it was predetermined. Side projects aside, college was the pathway to that international job I wanted. Of course, I had at other points wanted to be a pilot, chef, journalist, diplomat, lawyer, psychologist – in some ways marketing seemed to be a practical application of at least some of those disparate forces. I was definitely thinking employee, not entrepreneur, at the time. Besides the promise of work, friends, and learning - all of which I feel I’ve now been able to independently outsource from the college experience - the reason that now stays with me is legacy.</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/vqxw1m0phgguxw.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/vqxw1m0phgguxw_small.jpg" alt="img054.jpg"></a><br>
For my parents, success is to have immigrated to the United States, found fulfilling careers, and put their child through a good school. Magnificent job on their parts - but their achievements are not my own, and treading the well-worn path of the big-corp rat-race is starting to look more and more dreary to the most ambitious of our graduates. I have a new goal, abstracted but reflectively considered: <strong>to work through meaningful Big Problems by concepting, validating, and implementing creative open-ended solutions alongside a team of passionate experts constantly learning from one another to do the most possible good.</strong> I’m energized by audacious goals with powerful impacts, expanding my comfort zone through people and culture, and investing extra time into learning the important things schooling never covered. I strive to become an expert on empowering technologies, social engineering and human behavior, globalization, self-driven education, and entrepreneurship. I now study growth marketing, eCommerce, outsourcing, and front-end web design. I write about these adventures on the Survive Innovation blog. None of these skills have been necessarily inherent or deeply-covered in my major - but in bouncing around college and Asia, my vision has become clear. Here is how.</p>
<h1 id="what-i-experienced-in-asia_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#what-i-experienced-in-asia_1"> </a>What I Experienced in Asia</h1>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/sd5kmamswevcw.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/sd5kmamswevcw_small.png" alt="nine_nations.png"></a><br>
From as north as Beijing to as south as Shenzhen, China’s cities are wildly diverse. Patrick Chovanec beautifully segments the Wild Wild East into nine truly unique nations - <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/11/the-nine-nations-of-china/307769/">a must-read</a>. While I’ve explored what Chovanec calls the Metropolis, the Crossroads, and the Yellow Land, China for me has revolved most meaningfully around the Back Door: Shenzhen and Hong Kong. China’s loose interpretation of the law is best captured in a roughly translated quote: “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” It doesn’t get much further than south China. This is the true refuge of action-takers: historically, south China has been a place for commerce and experiments. From early exiles and smugglers, to rebels and renegades during British colonialism, to the entrepreneurs and emigrants of today, no place in China has attracted as tight a concentration of doers. <strong>What is China’s south? It is the hub of innovative growth.</strong> It proved to be the perfect place to fall in love with unconventional ways of doing things, and I doubt I could have come to the same place internally if I had experienced something different externally. The stage is set: this was my China.</p>
<p>I have an addiction to interesting stories and unique systems of doing things. The people of Boston have interesting ways of doings things. Cambridge is full of students deeply, refreshingly aware of their own metacognition: people who think of their to-do lists as a graph, of math as moving shapes, and of motivation as a thing to hack. I love the collective wisdom in this city of ideas, as Paul Graham would describe it. What was China, then? At its best, it was a nation of hard workers and hustlers, of long-term visionaries, of resourceful capitalism to a degree I had never seen it before, and of the modern-day trailblazers - both local and international - building new dreams on the back of untapped growth. If travel alone had not been infectiously enlightening, seeing China work was. </p>
<p><strong>The first thing I experience every day was complex, interesting stories.</strong> Few in South China answered the question, “Where are you from?” with anything but a long conversation. Even fewer for “What do you do?” Without having the experience of Silicon Valley, being around globally inclined people with the common threads of interesting side projects, a focus on self-improvement, and a deep desire to see you succeed made me feel more at home than I’ve ever been. South China showed me a high concentration of people with vision - but also drive to execute. Who knows environments like this exist and are even locally accessible when you’re a homework-burdened sophomore trying to be active on campus, learn to cook and remain social? <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;ved=0CDIQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fj4p3.com%2Fgetting-started-in-boston&amp;ei=lhimUtTnHMngsATN-YHoDw&amp;usg=AFQjCNGCUwre4va-oXgVelykS4a3cyfz5w&amp;sig2=znwrIrJWqvkhJllKYHOfSg&amp;bvm=bv.57752919,d.cWc">JP says it well</a>: to be a student entrepreneur, your first point of action must be to break free of the gravitational pull of campus events. China was a big break, and in terms of social groups, gave me direct insight into building groups of mentors, peers, and those you can inspire or help. It was what I always wanted out of school.</p>
<p><strong>The second thing I felt was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29">flow</a> - that state of optimized self derived from doing that which engages you fully.</strong> While in China, I’ve built small companies, created cross-cultural communities, consulted for multinationals on foreign market entry, and facilitated growth of social projects. It almost feels like I’ve been making up for lost time in Boston with so much on my plate. I also seemed to live four lives: as a student striving for academic excellence, as a job seeker and employee striving for growth, as an entrepreneur striving for learning and creation, and as a social traveler striving for new adventures and new friendships beyond my home bases. My greatest joy, especially in hindsight, was when I was doing all of them at once, maintaining middling stress levels, but going to bed every day with a schedule of tasks completed and an exciting new one set for tomorrow. </p>
<p><strong>What is flow for me?</strong> It is a <strong>variety of projects</strong> that challenge various competencies, and which I can synergize in terms of new skill acquisition or direct mutual benefit. It is a <strong>diversity of inspiring people</strong> that allow me to be both teacher and student. They get so much done that, to remain equally engaged and connected with them, I have no choice but to keep up. What an absolute rush, and what invaluable mutual accountability! It is the <strong>accomplishment of demanding work that yields visible impacts</strong> - be it in the crowds that turn up for our weekly networking events or the analytics showing hordes of new visitors to our site. To me, living an effective life means maximizing your positive impact on yourself and others - which requires quantifying it somehow. I am inspired by growth just as well as failure: I understand that both now yield insights into means of improvement, and designing my projects around the data satisfies sides of me both creative and logical. Finally, it lies in the <strong>inspiration of people to guide the creation of products</strong>. I’m not satisfied with work for work’s sake. I need a goal that doesn’t move the needle, but knocks it off its axis, whether that be mobilizing a community to take action on a cause or the creation of a solution physically or digitally to a pain of some sort. And in these situations, I work best with others. I love to tell stories, craft visions, and develop strategies for making things real - clearly and convincingly. The most valuable thing I’ve learned for my future career ambitions: if I’m not meaningfully learning, creating, and inspiring others - I should be somewhere else.</p>
<p>The final perspective: <strong>learning something challenging in a challenging environment doubles your output.</strong> There’s a discomfort inherent to pushing beyond stasis and safe ignorance, and to have done so both internally and externally has left me with more varied and honed skills than any other approach. In learning a language, this is especially important: in academia, Chinese in the classroom provides you 3 hours of practice per week supported by 3 hours of homework. Go to China. Your output in learning Chinese becomes nothing short of “every waking hour” if you allow it to be. Ours was 5 hours a day of directed study, 2 hours of homework and an hour with a language partner. The true gains came from application, practice, and retention actually within China. The same is true for coding. Or marketing. Even health. I’ve come to appreciate that fighting your environment versus obeying it is doubly counterintuitive. You can learn a skill through structured deep dives quickly. You can facilitate expertise through full immersion in a topic through Meetups, regular mentoring, and regular practice or daily cues anywhere. But to achieve true mastery, an environment doubly optimized for internal absorption and external review has been key for me to learn entrepreneurship and polish that Chinese. I aim to be mobile in my work for this reason most of all: <strong>I feel I can live well anywhere, but to generate consistent peak learning and experiences, I must be able to live the experience internally and externally.</strong></p>
<h1 id="how-this-changed-me_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#how-this-changed-me_1"> </a>How this Changed Me</h1>
<p>Leaving academics removed me from the grading cycle of consistent external authority. Entering a place entirely unknown to me launched me into reinventing myself in the absence of external expectations. Without authority and expectations in the earliest days of my time in Hong Kong, I felt something difficult to experience: an removal from external validation. This new world didn’t care what I was doing like graders or bosses do. As I consciously chose to be sociable, ambitious, entrepreneurial… I became one annoying ankle-biter. I tried too hard to make friends with too many bouncers, and got escorted out of nice places once or thrice. I launched barrages of questions at business founders until I was blue in the face. I picked up some clever ways to end conversations from that, but I was only cursed at twice (by a Shenzhen startup which may not have liked competition). From these business attempts, to social ones, to entrepreneurial ones with customers-to-be, <strong>I got really good at getting rejected</strong>. Once I overcame the sting, <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html">I started to figure things out</a>. The right ways to get on the VIP list are usually by email, not the door - but do it a few times and they remember your face. Also make some promoter friends - never fails. The right questions to ask entrepreneurs? The ones they haven’t heard yet, the ones that show you’ve looked into them, and the ones they’ll enjoy answering as much as you enjoy hearing. Dig into those specialties with people, go read a book for the basics. Turns out being aloof isn’t as effective as being charming, and buying drinks is a sucker’s game. Hiring managers have personally revealed that grades don’t matter as much as personal projects in many cases - ones you took on, collaborated for, and managed to completion on your own volition. All year long, I systematically relearned almost everything I had ever known in my previous environment. How? <strong>By getting over the need for external validation, and becoming comfortable with rejection</strong>. This may have been my most important personal discovery. As students, we are trained to seek approval and look to authority in the pursuit of objective correctness - assessed by grades. 14 months of overwhelming independence destroyed this heuristic in me. With an evolving but well-understood sense of purpose, I judge my internal validation with two questions, <a href="http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/If-Not-Now-When-Jeet-Banerjee-a;search%3Atag%3A%22tedxyouth-bommercanyon%22">well worded by friend Jeet Banerjee</a>: “Am I doing what I want to be?” The second, increasingly rarely asked: “Why not?”</p>
<p>I got great at connecting, decent at entrepreneurial management, and even learned to throw big beach parties effectively. Invaluable life skills. <strong>But the most useful skill at the heart of them all was teaching myself to learn.</strong> I learned from, in order of effectiveness: action, people, and books. It’s a travesty how this trio is reversed during our schooling. While my personal learning structures have changed over time, what has remained is the feeling of being in charge. I’ve taken open online courses from Stanford, Yale, Michigan, and MIT to learn social engineering, model thinking, and technical entrepreneurship for fun. I start projects I can’t handle - yet. Then I do as much as I can before I hit a wall, research quickly, and set coffee meetings with experts to pick their brains about getting past the barrier. I add and remove new strategies after gauging their effectiveness, conferring with other edu-hackers, and jumping back into my studies. I remember how some friends and I would say school was too easy - it was. Because we were taking what was taught to us at face value, doing it to the satisfaction of an assessment, and clearing mind space for the next thing. We were hacking the system to free up our time, not to learn other things. Video games were great fun for a time, and absolutely helped me learn English back in the day - true story. But once the realization of how valuable our time is dawns on a student, class time is analyzed with a newly critical eye. Questioning authority is the beginning. I remember getting a nice yelling-to at least once in every tier of school from elementary to high for probing too deeply at the purpose of what we were learning. Cursive especially never seemed very useful, especially when I was getting Ds in it. In my case, it was being entirely separated from authority in China that broke me completely from this gravitational pull of formal education. <strong>Schooling happens in classrooms, but learning happens on your own</strong>. This realization changed my life. I may not always be learning now, but I’m never bored and always appreciate my own time. It’s my most valuable resource, and with a newly voracious appetite for ideas and perspectives, I’ve structured the last two years of my own education. All it took was learning more abroad in a single year than in college in Boston over three.</p>
<p>When I left for China the first time as a sophomore, I packed two huge suitcases. On my next trip, for a year, I packed a large and a small one. By the time I was returning home, I had only a carry-on and backpack and was easily suited for indefinite travel. <strong>Travel first taught me that things must be assessed by their value as well as their cost</strong>: not only of price, but weight, mental space, and in their absence with someone who might better use them. The things I carried still mattered to me, but I needed fewer of them. The true mental shift of travel came not from the time at airports, but from time having experiences. In Asia, I bought plane tickets that cost less than a tank of American gas that took me to a different country. The adventures I had, people I met, and memories never caught on camera aren’t just beyond explanation to my Boston-based peers, they’re beyond meaningful imagination. I came to appreciate just how small the world is and how easy it is to create the types of experiences we’ve always wanted to have. An around the world ticket? <a href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/10/08/round-the-world-plane-ticket/">They usually clock in at $4,000</a> by rough estimate. A dream like that is already in reach, and compared to items I might buy with that amount, no item can match up. <strong>Travel taught me a more important thing about possessions: they can never match up to the joy of experiences.</strong> I now desire to live life simply in terms of possessions and extravagantly in terms of experiences. I do not seek wealth - only financial peace of mind, and the type of work that allows me to do both well for myself and good for others. Luckily, my needs are dramatically low - and with the cost of rooms in South East Asia at a delightful value, I can get by on a freelancer’s salary literally immediately if I needed to. Money is less important to me than how I can spend it, with whom, with what degree of global mobility, and with what degree of free time. In truth, no one desires to be a millionaire. They desire the lifestyle of one. It just so happens my favorite region of the world has a much lower cost of entry for the experience, and I want to maximize these adventures before my body is old and weary.</p>
<p>I now think back to the day I was writing my trip intention essay: the assignment was mundane, but the gravity was crushing. By completing the essay, I would be signing away my next year to a fate on the other side of the world. I was absolutely scared shitless. I forced myself to get over it, dumping my brain on the page complete with its insecurities mingled with excitement. The next few weeks were busy - but with the constant feeling of waiting. Soon this monster of an experience I had been talking about for years - “Yeah, I’ll be in China for a year, should be cool” - was actually going to happen, and after the essay, I knew internally it was too late for me to turn back. I was committed to a future me that was better than my present, demanding in a way I had never been before, but now prepared to ask even more. In Asia, I learned to ask difficult questions of myself to set important goals to which only I can hold myself accountable. I was placed into a strange environment that forced me to teach myself to form new social groups, find new mentors, and capitalize of new opportunities. The environment and the responsibilities doubly challenged me, but left me with an understanding of my own capacity to create meaningful relationships, learning experiences, and strive for genuine adventures. I felt true, proud flow through all my work - and my pride reduced my need for receiving this validation externally. It was the most important year of my life, and has irrevocably changed. It has made me dissatisfied, in the healthiest way possible. I force myself to improve so as to improve others around me so as to improve the world at scale. I’m dissatisfied with our ambition versus our potential. I’m dissatisfied with education now that I understand learning, with careers now that I understand entrepreneurship, with objects now that I understand experiences, and dissatisfied with time used poorly now that I’ve felt it used well. I may not know where I want to end up yet. I do know what I’m good at, and how to learn about things I’m not yet an expert. I am skilled at setting goals and establishing accountability, and move in small intervals towards a bigger impact. I know to question everything I know, appreciate my ignorance, and build empowering environment around myself. I know I don’t want to just move the needle - I want to knock it off its axis. I think technology, entrepreneurship, self-directed learning, and globalization will be my most valuable tools. I’m ready to act.</p>
<h1 id="now-what_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#now-what_1"> </a>Now What?</h1>
<p>I’ve done my fair share of exploring. Now I will be learning, creating, and sharing. <strong>My first goal is and has been to minimalize. Everything.</strong> First, my possessions. Anything that is not regularly necessary to my being makes me less effective, and will be better off in a new home. Many things I’m selling to pay down my some luckily light student loans. Some I am giving away in exchange for a personal challenge: a guitar can be yours in exchange for a song, but only if it truly pushes your comfort zone. All that remains will be given away in a way that will maximize the good I can do. Next, my time: entertainment is a consumptive force that rarely gives more than it takes away. So is useless information. I have plenty for small talk already - so I’ve cut many topics out of my information diet, from politics to sports to video games. I am moving gradually but surely along the 80/20 principle: I seek to maximize my outputs by putting 80% of my time on the 20% of work that creates the majority of my impact. The rest? I’ve gotten familiar enough with South East Asia to love outsourcing. What I can’t outsource, impact, or meaningfully consume I’ll ignore. Time is too precious. Alongside this, my learning: to have a broad knowledge base may make one an expert, but we are judged at scale by our output. I seek to master skills quickly to the point of being able to create high-quality products with a minimum of time invested, and the foundation of knowledge that enables me to acquire specific details on demand as they’re needed for a project. Lastly, and painfully, people: having met true giants and influencers, and having felt their direct impact on me, I know I must surround myself with those from whom I can learn and who are willing to learn from me. The combination is rare, and already not present in certain friends of convenience created throughout college. A year out of sight and mind has made this easy for me, and the effect of my current revised close circle has been exponentially educational and enjoyable.</p>
<p><strong>My second goal is to optimize my learning via self and environment.</strong> I continue to improve the structures I used to teach myself new skills, and have three upcoming trials: learning growth hacking (low-cost viral marketing for startups), outsourcing, and front-end web design. I set a month aside for each skill to do a deep dive in a single topic, almost as if it were a meditative practice. Alongside learning, I want to be following my daily habits in fitness and nutrition, mindfulness, reading, meeting new people, and building adventures. No time to waste. To optimize my environment, I’m capitalizing on my newfound mobility - and lack of stuff. I plan to move to the West coast in January. After Boston and New York, I’ll first visit Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Then I make my way to Los Angeles, and eventually to San Francisco. In every place, I have events and some purpose as well as some friends to meet but many more to make. I’ve done it across South East Asia and Europe - now I want to create personal landing zones in California. While there, I will be seeking short-term internships in environments that will allow me to directly use the skills I’m learning on legitimate projects that will grow my network, portfolio, and understanding. Mostly, these will be startups. Mostly, we will have been put through to one another via a mutual friend with startup success. I couldn’t ask for more out of school.</p>
<p>By March, I will be seeking to take my current startup project to an accelerator program in the US or Asia, join a promising startup with my newly developed skillset as an employee with a sizable equity stake, or begin a new project with the highly-skilled engineers whose couches I’ll be crashing on in the first place. My expenses will be minimal and my savings are enough to help me through ~4 months without accounting for rent. I’ll continue to freelance for income, but what I’m searching for in the day-to-day is very specific. I come to California to learn specific skills, rather than work. I want to optimize my learning by teaching myself while simultaneously doing projects related to my fields of current interest. I want to spend about a month or two immersed in each skill/workplace, while also writing about it all <a href="http://surviveinnovation.com">(HERE)</a>. Pay is secondary. My goals for my work will demand it is long-term not fixed to location. My role must allow high impact within the a company or cause, but demand time used effectively rather than generously. The things I do must be mediums by which I learn - if I’m not, I’m intellectually dying.</p>
<h1 id="parting-thoughts_1">
<a class="head_anchor" href="#parting-thoughts_1"> </a>Parting Thoughts</h1>
<p>My aha moments in Asia came with a cliché attached. “…and before I could legally buy a drink” would apply, but Hong Kong’s liquor laws are a little different. It’s not just that one law. There’s a world beyond your school, your job, your country – most of all, your comfort zone. It’s too easy to dismiss Chinese business as full of copycats without considering their leviathans of innovation like Tencent. It’s charming to think of Thailand as a place to relax until you see Bangkok’s international digital nomads crafting the next big internet service. It’s fun to think of Hong Kong as a cool place to shop or shoot a movie when you haven’t feet the undercurrent of energy in finance, entrepreneurship, and design. But now that I’ve seen it all and even affected it, I can’t dismiss anything. Travel and new places are not abstracts. They produce more than photos to share. Trips affect you deeply and profoundly, and quietly tempt you to rethink leaving. They are vehicles for self-discovery that have yielded unmatched experiences, unparalleled friendships, and reflective insights. My trip has dramatically and permanently altered the flow of my life, and I accept future adventures my alter it even more dramatically. I couldn’t be more thankful that this experience has been made available to me, and I’m grateful to myself for having made the most of it. I’m ready for my next adventure, and want to empower others to have the same great discoveries. My life mission will be to maximize my exploration of myself, my varied environments, and its inhabitants. It will be to remain a lifelong learner, finding my entertainment from the attainment of hard-earned excellence in new skills and bases of knowledge that lead to legitimate internal &amp; external gains. I will focus on creation of meaningful solutions to key problems with passionate experts to create long-lasting positive change that allows many to do both well and good. And finally, I will share my adventures, failures, and successes transparently and authentically with those who similarly desire to explore, learn, create, and share. And I will always be looking forward to revising all these knowns, for in a year I’ve already proven to myself how little can truly be certain. </p>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/dream-at-the-end-of-the-world2014-02-11T17:46:32-08:002014-02-11T17:46:32-08:00Dream At the End of the World<p><strong>“Sorry mom, I’m missing graduation.”</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/a7a5y9xvz2c4eq.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/a7a5y9xvz2c4eq_small.jpg" alt="Shanghai.jpg"></a></p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p><strong>What’s up?</strong> If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ve one of the amazing people I want to keep in touch over the next three months from the other side of the world. You can subscribe to these posts to hear about building a life and a company in China, and <a href="mailto:capax.infinity@gmail.com">email me</a> with the subject <em>Connect China</em> to get my personal monthly updates. Full story follows &amp; post may be updated occasionally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>China is not the easiest place to love. Tellings of my first visit at age 19 are usually interrupted by <em>“Things must have been so cheap!”</em> or <em>“No drinking age!”</em> Stuff was weird, man. Lots of cranes, people, bad advertising — and opportunity. Few sitting toilets, English speakers, familiar products — or chances to stray from the structured program. Being immersed in a truly alien environment for 6 weeks left me more curious than actually wanting to go back. </p>
<p>I left ambivalent, questioning my initial plans for world domination: now EU-born and American-raised, becoming Asia-based suddenly seemed like a step in a very uncomfortable direction. Back at college in Boston, considering Asia involved telling everyone I was shipping back for the new American Dream — in China. </p>
<p>In hindsight, I wasn’t convincing them, but myself. Social pre-commitment is an awesome motivation hack. I still remember sitting on the bus to Boston from New York the month before my plane to China would be lifting off, scared shitless looking at the blank Word doc that would be my letter of intent to study abroad. But my past self had talked me into it, and off we went.</p>
<p>By 2013, I had spent over a year in Asia spread as north as Beijing, China and as south as Jakarta, Indonesia. I had the best, most productive, most socially connective year of my life in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. I left not ambivalent, but focused on making the most of the momentum. I almost didn’t leave at all. Returning had become a matter of when, not if. Now I know.</p>
<p><strong>Turns out it’s February 21nd, 2014 to Shanghai, China.</strong> </p>
<p>Why? In layman’s terms: some friends and I earned a grant to work and learn to transform our idea into a business over the next 3 months. The days will be long and communication may be hard, so I’ll be writing here regularly and very spontaneously emailing/Skyping cool people in during breathing room.</p>
<p><strong>What I expect</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>9-14 hour days talking to customers &amp; building marketing channels.</li>
<li>Lots of dim sum, this time avoiding the sewer oil (don’t Google it).</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.chinaccelerator.com/mentors/">Working with amazing people</a> to become a China consumer &amp; startup guru.</li>
<li>Returning to San Francisco after May to pour rocket fuel on building something great after refining the idea.</li>
<li>Not dropping off the face of the early completely to my US/EU-based friends. Australians ok, too.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>For the startup-inclined folks</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.shophop.me/">ShopHop</a>, which started off as a shopping itinerary planner during Startup Weekend in Hong Kong, is entering batch 5 of <a href="http://www.chinaccelerator.com/">Chinaccelerator, a Shanghai-based accelerator</a> to get a full makeover with a new focus on broader adventure planning drawn from local experts. Part angel fund, part business boot camp, an accelerator has been compared to getting a startup MBA but asks for a piece of equity in exchange for a small round of funding. </p>
<p><strong>What would help?</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Mentors: We’d love to send our progress to a select few mentors beyond the program to collect some feedback by email. You know who you are! We’re in the consumer mobile space.</p></li>
<li><p>Housing: Know folks in Shanghai? 3 teams are looking to rent large accommodations between March - May 2014, ourselves included.</p></li>
<li><p>Customer Interviews: I’d love to talk to many of you as we build. 15 minutes of your time = 1 hour of secondary research. Or more. We’ll be reaching out to help us make ShopHop great.</p></li>
<li><p>On-site Developer Talent: Know a wiz on Android/iOS in Shanghai (or China &amp; willing to relocate) looking for opportunities with a funded startup? <a href="mailto:capax.infinity@gmail.com">Let’s talk.</a></p></li>
<li><p>Good Vibes: Send them our way, get some in return. Best from China, folks. &lt;3</p></li>
</ul>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/getting-mentored-effectively2014-02-11T16:18:39-08:002014-02-11T16:18:39-08:00Getting Mentored Effectively<p>A Chinese manager of mine had a saying, “There are two types of people: introverts, and extroverts.” He watched over sales, hired friendly but aggressive extroverts, and although I can’t give props on ideology, the returns came in solid and steady. But damn, there were a lot of arguments. Mastering the art of networking can be very similar to sales: listen, relate, connect. Your killer network game doesn’t help when you’ve already made the inroads and now want to receive mentorship. So what does effective mentoring look like?</p>
<p><strong>Know your goal!!!</strong></p>
<p>You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you want to end up! Getting mentored means drawing on their past experience to improve your present. Boil down what you want to know or what you want to leave with. Maybe it’s people – a new connection or reference is a concrete thing you can walk away with. For a startup looking for investment, you may want to know what it’d take to get people coming to you for coffee. For one just growing, you may want advice on next steps to achieve a certain outcome. Now put it into one sentence.</p>
<p>The explorative, long-form sitdown chat is awesome. It’s where want want to be: bouncing ideas and riffing on approaches with Musk or Branson. But you don’t start with a whole Sunday to connect – you start with 15 minutes, if that. Make the most of it, have a goal – you’ll leverage it later.</p>
<p><strong>Get your research in!!</strong></p>
<p>Alright, chief, you got a game plan. Now review the playbook: for those you want to talk to, do your research!</p>
<p>You’re looking for something you can use to get to know them better or something they’re working on passionately: check out any YouTube speaker clips they might have put up from talks or conferences, a blog if they write one, and at least skim Twitter to get a feel for their style. Personality is a big player in how useful the interaction will be.</p>
<p>Look for matches between their experience and your goals. Are they masters of product, marketing, business leadership, or a tech ninja? Maybe they’re not in entrepreneurship at all – doesn’t matter. Know from what angle someone is most able to help. LinkedIn and CrunchBase/AngelList are good for this. If they’re investors, check through their portfolio – extra brownie points for referring to one of their companies and seeking to learn from something they did. You overachiever, you.</p>
<p><strong>Ask specific questions!</strong></p>
<p>“Well, what would you do in my situation?” – the worst question in a mentor-mentee relationship. Put your mentor in your shoes, and they come with the loaded baggage of experience, mindframes, resources, and probably a few tricks up their sleeves – likely few that you have. You want to do more than just get to know the way they think. You want to apply that thinking to your specific problem.</p>
<p>Not “Do you think this is a good idea?”</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>“What type of metrics would convince you we’re onto something?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not “What should we do next?”</p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>“We’re trying to decide between A and B, which have X strengths/weaknesses. Which might make most sense if we’re trying to accomplish this specific goal?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ask questions you’ll find directly useful and actionable. Ask questions they’ll enjoy answering. Make it an intellectual exercise.</p>
<p><strong>Listen – but guide the conversation</strong></p>
<p>Absorb everything that’s giving you useful knowledge. Synthesize what was said for your own understanding and theirs. Then dig into it or move onto the next thing.</p>
<p>Challenge suggestions you want more clarity on or disagree with – if you’re simply nodding along, they’ll be as tuned out as you’ll be becoming.</p>
<p><strong>Follow through, follow up</strong></p>
<p>Useful advice, full notebook, back at your desk? Review and synthesize everything, meet with fellow team members to discuss if needed, but make sure you do something with the advice you’ve been given! You’re not going to get any smiles in coming back to a mentor without proof you’ve attempted to learn more about or implement a strategy. Bring work you’ve done, share what worked, what didn’t, and why. Return with more specific questions and a slightly more refined goal. But do return. A friendly email after the meeting is polite. Fill it with proof of what you’ve done since you last chatted, and you’ll have another meeting before you know it. Mentors love making an impact. Be that impact.</p>
<p><strong>And don’t sweat it, you’ll be great.</strong></p>
<p>I approached <a href="http://www.masstlcuncon.org/mentors/">Boston unConference’s +100 mentor list</a>, narrowed down those I wanted to talk to, guided the conversations with specific questions, and left with a follow-up plan after I had considered or implementation some suggestions. 20 minutes each with a CEO, a VC, and a Product Director.</p>
<p>The best moments of conversation were ones in which we interrupted each other because we couldn’t wait to jump on an idea. We cut off conversations about things we began to understand before the full thought was finished – to get to the next exciting thing. These mind flares are the sign you’re getting somewhere.</p>
<p>Even better? Leaving with questions unanswered on both sides. Few forces are more powerful than curiosity. Only have a silly 20-minute sitdown? Don’t cover everything – cover enough to get your value, and get them wanting to hear more. Keep on it. You may have just found yourself a mentor. You’ll be at those leisurely poolside chats with Branson or Musk mind melds before you know it.</p>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/stop-trying-to-move-the-needle2014-02-11T16:15:19-08:002014-02-11T16:15:19-08:00Stop Trying to Move the Needle<p>It’s true I’ve been incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to write this.</p>
<p>Rewind to 6 years old in Krakow, Poland with little Michael jumping into mud puddles under the care of young parents still in graduate school. I thought I was pretty damn slick when, in a fortuitous twist of fate, my family “temporarily” relocated to New Jersey in the Land of Dreams, the United States of America. My dad arranged a limo to pick us up at the airport as we first stepped on American soil. No idea how long he saved up for the glitz.</p>
<p>Soon, we were sending photos back to our Eastern European family of us wearing nice clothes against the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty. An immigrant cliche. The words of English we knew on entry – originally “hungry, thirsty, bathroom, crayons” – soon couldn’t be counted on both hands. “Temporary” turned to a little longer than we expected.</p>
<p>Another jump forward, with English conquered (free invitation to call me out on any mistakes), Permanent Residency cards in hand, and their child off to college, my parents had done very well. The Gasiorek settler flag had been firmly planted.</p>
<p><strong>But I hadn’t really accomplished very much, had I?</strong></p>
<p>I followed my family to America. I got good grades in school. I participated in some clubs, won a few little awards, played my fair share of video games. I was accepted and am soon to graduate from college with some side projects. Some were even cool.</p>
<p>But really, what of that is anything but average? We work on things like a new app to connect people more readily, the small T-shirt companies, or maybe your project is more on the self-branding slant. Absolutely vital part of self-exploration, I think we’d agree.</p>
<p>You hack, you hustle, you make beautiful things that make the lives of smartphone owners or TV watchers or marketing managers easier. You’ve got a sweet startup already gunning to recruit you, but you’re choosing between that and consulting, or maybe spinning it off into an acquisition by a company that’ll eventually bore you into starting your next big thing. A car, house, beautiful wife/handsome husband (also clever), and loving family are in your future, too. You’ll work hard but smart to provide for them beyond their needs and nurture your brood of the next generation with well-earned wisdom. That’d be nice. It is nice – and I hope as much for many bright, successful people. You’ve moved the needle and then some. You’ve earned your restful years.</p>
<p><strong>But you don’t want to just move the needle.</strong></p>
<p>Life is good. But as your server brings your second drink to the beach chair tickled by waxing ocean tides, there’s that little voice that got you this far – again.</p>
<p>Let’s sat you’ve been looking at Google’s 10x approach.<br>
Internet for everyone? Clever.<br>
Self-driving cars? Ambitious.<br>
Life extension? Audacious!</p>
<p>Maybe you’re a follower of Tim Ferris.<br>
Setting up a passive income business – that sure is smart.<br>
Using that free time to optimize your physicality? That’s ambitious, too.<br>
Unlocking the strategies to master nearly any skill in a month’s time? Who does this guy think he is?</p>
<p>Some of this seems like fiction already, so let’s run with it: <a href="https://twitter.com/Jason">@Jason</a> had interesting things to say about <a href="http://blog.launch.co/blog/googlewinseverything-part-1.html">Google versus Wayland Corporation</a>, the fictional futurism conglomerate of the Alien series. Seems like they’re both to be pinnacles of ambition for our age, even if only one is real.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.weylandindustries.com/timeline">Take a look at the fictional company timeline</a>, going from bottom-up: </p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>Days after his 14th birthday, Peter Weyland is granted a Method Patent for a synthetic trachea constructed entirely of synthetically-engineered stem cells. It is his 12th registered patent to date. -October 2004</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Seems mad, right? Until you consider more ambitious people already exist: they’re recruited annually by the Theil Foundation, UnCollege, and other groups invested in those not yet jaded, not yet anchored by responsibilities, not yet made unimaginative by the mundanities of societal expectation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thielfellowship.org/tag/laura-deming/">Here’s Laura Demind</a>: in a research lab by 12, at MIT by 14, awarded a $100,000 grant by the Theil Fellowship by 17. She wants to cure aging. She’s off to a good start.</p>
<p><strong>You want to knock the needle off its axis</strong></p>
<p>Why do we settle for less, follow the crowd, and limit our ambition?</p>
<p>We have ready internet access to all of the world’s knowledge. We understand English, arguably the language most common to business and research. We have the time and capital necessary not to think twice about reading through this whole piece, maybe even checking an email or two in between. By reading this alone, we admit we are infinitely privileged.</p>
<p>Technology, internet access, education, and entrepreneurship are all becoming cheaper – sometimes even free. These pillars will become transformative in bringing to bear more vibrant economies, uncovering savants in developing nations, and empowering students and the unemployed alike to take charge of their fate. The tools already exist. It’s the ambition that is sometimes lacking.</p>
<p>What excuses do we collectively have for not doing that which brings to the most good to the most people? Honestly, not very many.</p>
<p>So, hopefully you read this before that third drink in time for the sunset has quieted that nagging voice. And, hopefully, this time, you give it a listen and see what plans it might have in store for you yet.</p>
tag:mgasiorek.com,2014:Post/whats-in-your-backpack2014-02-11T16:01:35-08:002014-02-11T16:01:35-08:00What's in Your Backpack?<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/hpbqp1xjqqgtua.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/hpbqp1xjqqgtua_small.jpg" alt="Backpack.jpg"></a></p>
<blockquote class="large">
<p>“How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack… with all the stuff that you have in your life. You feel the straps cutting into your shoulders?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ryan Bingham, the quote’s author, is an advocate of the empty backpack. He’s a successful business man, a frequent global traveler, speaker – and something of a self-proclaimed shark. He’s also not real: he’s the main character of the powerful movie Up In The Air.</p>
<p>I learned thousands of years of Chinese history and hundreds of simplified Chinese characters before my trip, but the first time I was leaving for the opposite side of the world, I knew very little of light backpacks. I packed two huge suitcases filled with more clothes than I would wear, products I would consume, or books I would read. 6 weeks after arriving I was repacking my bags to leave, and noticing shirts I had never even unrolled.</p>
<p><strong>Protip 1: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/06/business/businessspecial/20100506-pack-ss.html">Rolling your fabrics saves space</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Protip 2: Not taking crap you won’t use saves even more.</strong></p>
<p>My second trip to Asia would be for a year, but I had learned my lesson. I packed clothes right for the range of climates I would explore, digitized everything I could to eliminate books from my luggage, and avoided bringing anything consumable. The result: two medium bags, and gunning to go.</p>
<p>I hadn’t really learned much after all. By my return in August 2013, I had a carry on and a backpack to my name and was set for indefinite travel.</p>
<p><strong>Travel didn’t force me cut down on my items – it forced me to reassess my needs, and examine their costs.</strong></p>
<p>The things we own can definitely bring us value. It saved me recurring payments at cyber cafes to type this on my own laptop, the time it would take to make a visit to use a library computer, and brought me joy to know I had a powerhouse machine at my fingertips when I first bought it. Money, time, and happiness – must be living the dream!</p>
<p>But this thing has costs far beyond its price. For one, it’s really damn heavy. I own it, I use it regularly, and so I have to carry the burden – both on body and mind. Worse yet, if it’s not doing much for me, who else might find the same joy from it I once did?</p>
<p><strong>The objects that bring us value come at a cost beyond their price.</strong></p>
<p>We are literally weighed down by our hoards and empires. We become unable to travel easily. We suffer messes in our homes and offices. We lug redundant gadgets with us just in case. We justify our overflowing closets because we dress to impress – when it’s really not the clothes that make the man or woman, but vice versa. Is that sixth hoodie worth the five pounds &amp; space in your backpack?</p>
<p>Our minds are equally burdened. We amass things for the “what ifs,” “maybe whens,” and one-time projects. Unused tools, unread books, and unworn clothes don’t just add pounds to our bag. They remind us daily of their existence, nagging us to use them, read them, wear them. At worst, they instill in us a feeling of inadequacy. <em>“I can’t believe I haven’t gotten around to reading The Aneid yet!”</em> Is that book you’ve let sit for months worth its equivalent weight on your mind?</p>
<p>The world beyond America isn’t the only place unused to our common excesses – even our own neighborhoods have great need. The final trigger for me to purge my closet of 90 pounds of clothes this Christmas came from the weight of conscience. Considering marginal utility, another power tool in your garage is worth a fraction of what it’d mean to a handyman, a neighbor, or even a struggling artist doing freelance maintenance work. And hey, it’ll feel good to give. Science. Could you be happier in getting rid of some things than in keeping them?</p>
<p>Think about your garage, your bathroom cabinet, or your closet. Have you used everything there in the last six months? What about last year or two? If not, does knowing you own that diamond-edge rotary saw, miracle crow’s feet cream, or set of leopard pumps make you happy – or does accruing more stuff begin seeming like a force of habit?</p>
<p><strong>What I learned on the other side of the world</strong></p>
<p>Travel first taught me that things must be assessed by their value as well as their cost: not only of price, but weight, mental space, and in their absence with someone who might better use them. The things I carried still mattered to me, but I needed fewer of them.</p>
<p>The true mental shift of travel came not from the time at airports, but from time having experiences. In Asia, I bought plane tickets that cost less than a tank of American gas that took me to a different country. The adventures I had, people I met, and memories never caught on camera aren’t just beyond explanation to current college peers, they’re beyond outward expression.</p>
<p>I came to appreciate just how small the world is and how easy it is to create the types of experiences we’ve always wanted to have. An around the world ticket? They can clock in at $4,000 by rough estimate. A dream like that is already in reach, and compared to items I might buy with that amount, few things can match up. Travel taught me a more important thing about possessions: they can never match up to the joy of experiences.</p>
<p>Money is less important to me than how I can spend it, with whom, with what degree of global mobility, and with what degree of free time. A wise saying goes, we don’t want to all be millionaires – we just want to live like them. It just so happens my favorite region of the world has a much lower cost of entry for the experience, and I want to maximize these adventures before my body is old and weary.</p>
<p><strong>Taking my own medicine</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/oxxgg8lja7miva.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/oxxgg8lja7miva_small.jpg" alt="IMG_20140107_070753.jpg"></a></p>
<p>The above is all I own, and will be adequate for indefinite travel once I pick up a windproof/waterproof jacker. Realizing what’s important makes it much easier to get rid of the things that aren’t. Priority one: minimize. Everything. First, my possessions. Anything that is not regularly necessary makes me less effective, and will be better off in a new home. Many things I’m selling to pay down my some luckily light student loans. Some I am giving away in exchange for a personal challenge: a guitar can be yours in exchange for a song, but only if it truly pushes your comfort zone. All that remains will be given away in a way that will maximize the good I can do.</p>
<p>90 pounds of clothes &amp; gadgets have already been liquidated &amp; recycled. </p>
<p>How?</p>
<ul>
<li>Step 1: I hosted a going away party in Boston. We cooked all our remaining food, drunk all our remaining wine — and also sold/gifted some of my “best” possessions to close friends. Great mementos, useful things, and high return on investment.</li>
<li>Step 2: Remaining upper-to-middle quality clothes were cosigned at cash-up-front consignment/reseller shops Buffalo Exchange &amp; Crossroads Trading Co. in New York City and Boston. Returns are 30% and 35% up front, respectively. Buffalo Exchange tends to accept broader styles.</li>
<li>Step 3: Professional &amp; durable clothes clothes and shoes were donated to Dress Outs, which provides rehabilitated parolees with apparel to become employment-ready after release. This was done directly through a relationship with Buffalo Exchange in New York City.</li>
<li>Step 4: Remaining men’s clothes not fit for the program were donated to a local men’s homeless shelter in lower New York.</li>
<li>Step 5: Finally, loose ends and random gadgets of value too good for a recycling plant were donated to a New Jersey Goodwill.</li>
</ul>
<p>Or, keep it simple: <a href="http://www.pickupplease.org/donation-pickup">schedule a pickup.</a></p>
<p>Getting these things together took a single day. Getting rid of them took half of another – not counting the party. I made almost $500 and donated the majority of goods to causes where they will be better used. I feel lighter, more optimized to do both well and good.</p>
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<p>Ryan makes two more points. To move is human – and with how little I now own by comparison, I can’t wait to get on the road.</p>
<p>The other thing? To be an effective human is to be a shark, to hunt alone. There, I couldn’t disagree more. With newfound mobility and more space in my bag, I’ve got plenty of room for some great new people. Here’s to winter in California.</p>